06-04-2012, 12:40 AM
The RedBox plan doesn't sound all that interesting to me, although I suppose it depends on how big their streaming content is. All the words coming from them seem to indicate a continued focus on the kiosks, which I'm not overly fond of. RedBox kinda takes the old physical rental problem and makes it much worse in that you have to return it the next day to avoid a late fee. It's cheap, but the selection is extremely limited and it's not cheap if you don't return the disc within 24 hours. Part of why Netflix won the war with rental stores is because you CAN sit on the discs for a long time (I do this all the time too, but "lazy returns" is a great feature to me).
Essentially I agree that competition is coming but if you wait until it settles out then it's too late to place your bets.
Hearing that LoveFilm sucks gives me some more confidence as well. Any idea how Netflix is in Europe? Apparently LoveFilm is locking down all sorts of content (Warner, Sony and Universal) but that might just make them go out of business faster if their model is flawed. (And apparently the Universal deal is for "UK streaming", so presumably Netflix is not locked out of the rest of Europe.)
Sounds like Netflix is only just getting rolling in Europe this year though so maybe it's too early to guess how it's going to go over there.
Essentially I agree that competition is coming but if you wait until it settles out then it's too late to place your bets.
Hearing that LoveFilm sucks gives me some more confidence as well. Any idea how Netflix is in Europe? Apparently LoveFilm is locking down all sorts of content (Warner, Sony and Universal) but that might just make them go out of business faster if their model is flawed. (And apparently the Universal deal is for "UK streaming", so presumably Netflix is not locked out of the rest of Europe.)
Sounds like Netflix is only just getting rolling in Europe this year though so maybe it's too early to guess how it's going to go over there.